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Nivi's journal Entry 2
Am I going crazy? Two days ago, I helped recover some poor wageslave for someone that I can’t even name. I was with that troll and the slashing goronit I met before, not really sure how I have stumbled into teaming with them. We went to the vanished man’s house, a posh, shiny place with no personality, provided by someone to keep their employees happy. The human of unpredictable temper (I figure that is a polite way of saying he is a total loon) and the troll were off looking into things themselves, while I wandered outside, smelling the designer roses and wishing the target had some character I could use to track him. The troll moved to sit on the porch with a pillowcase full of stolen Chinese delivery and the human started doing something inside. Suddenly, the troll jumped up and started bellowing, “He at airport!” (He doesn’t speak very good English). “Uh, of course,” I replied cautiously, thinking that his plundered food must have gone bad. “Did the pillowcase tell you that?” You really don’t want to upset a troll, and this one had the stability of a dragon on a pogo stick. Eventually, through his mumbled and incoherent speech, I realized he was trying to tell us that he is a mage of some kind and his spirit? djinni? - tracked down our target to the airport. There was something about the Chinese food and the pillowcase in there that I couldn’t understand. He’s an enormous, terrifying person but there was something about what he was saying that made me believe him. Maybe it was just that he was so clearly out of place, from the moment I first saw him, that I might have partly believed him if he told us something impossible. But the airport almost made sense. So we hopped in my car and I told it to drive us to the airport, the troll in the back seat with his huge hands twisting the pillowcase (now empty and stained). Weirdly, in the half-hour drive, he started grunting again and then suddenly fell asleep. First insanity, then incontinence and now narcolepsy. Does anyone else think there is something very wrong with the Awakened troll genome? Next thing, he will develop flatulence and a social disease or two. Mr. Stabby was sitting quietly in the front seat, lost in his thoughts. I was thinking hard too, wondering if the money would be worth all this and hoping the troll wasn’t drooling while he slept. Does troll drool stain? At the airport, the troll did something – I never figured out what. Suddenly, a voice on the public address system announced, “Attention all passengers! Mr. ____ is at gate __.” Repeated and very loud. Yes, we found our target, but the four people with him had no chance of missing our entrance with that going on. Mr. Stabby somehow rigged a security cart to take us to the gate and we zipped on through security. One of the guards looked a bit familiar to me, but I had no chance to really look at him. When Mr. ____’s abductors spotted us, they moved to block us. Even in my alarm, I noticed that they acted well together, like a team. In the next instant, Mr. Stabby used the cart to knock them down, like bowling pins. I shouted for the target to come to us and I think he tried but the cart knocked him down, and he fell hard. Mr. Stabby is never going to drive my car. Suddenly, the troll had a long knife which looked strangely tiny in his hands. I couldn’t see where he got it from. Mr. Stabby had vicious looking claws extending from his arms. Both of them leaped into action and I was standing there frozen, behind them. For an instant, the entire scene seemed impossibly funny. Passengers everywhere, turning to watch the commotion. One of them had started to drink his coffee and was dribbling it down the front of his classy blue shirt. The cart, stopped, but with the wheels still moving, and these tough men, on the ground groaning. The last one standing turned and met my eyes for the barest instant. Impossibly funny, but not funny at all. I wanted to laugh. I yelled, putting the force of That Voice into my words: “Drop your pants!” His hands jerked towards his belt, one still gripping an exotic-looking knife. For that single instant, he wanted to obey me but there was another part of him struggling against my order and so he stood, frozen. For that one moment, my dad, clown and prankster, lived again. He would have loved that, the idea of this poor gonk stumbling half-naked through the airport. I could almost hear him hoot in that huge, uncontrollable way that made my mother glare and sigh. It also had made me squirm, humiliated, but I would do anything to hear it again now. Their defenses fell apart quickly and we easily gathered up Mr. Long, putting him gently on the cart and heading back through security. Passing a group of policemen, I told them we had a medical emergency, and so we made our escape easily – I suppose the bleeding and unconscious man convinced them. Mr. Insanity Claws and the Pillowcase Kid – or should I call him “Chats with Spring Rolls”? - I’m still trying to figure out who they are... Anyhow, Mr. Claws somehow arranged for the security tapes to be altered for us. The troll fussed over the injured man while we drove off. I even think the blood may come out of the back seats. And when I saw the video of the incident at the airport, I could imagine my dad’s wild cackling. It was edited to replace us with clowns, and it looked hysterically funny, with people blundering around and a hundred bouncing clowns dancing from the security cart. They bumped into each other, tossing brightly colored balls around and tumbling around like squirrels. Am I going crazy? I think I can still hear my dad laughing. Back to Layflat Shadowrun